Federal Panel to Hold Rights Hearing in County : Complaints: The Civil Rights Commission action is a response to Latino groups’ charges of governmental discrimination. The December event will be a first.

A federal civil rights panel will hold a public hearing in Orange County next month in response to broad charges by Latino groups that county government perpetuates racial discrimination and insensitivity to minorities.

The Dec. 11 fact-finding session by the California advisory panel of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission will be a first in Orange County, officials said Monday.

Representatives of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, the national organization that filed 25 complaints with the Civil Rights Commission this summer, said they hope the hearing will be a first step toward correcting a system that sometimes leaves Latinos and other minorities in Orange County on the periphery of power or excludes them altogether.

Among other complaints, LULAC charged that:

* Latinos are not adequately represented on a newly formed board responsible for converting the county’s Medi-Cal program to a “managed care” system.

* Latinos have been excluded from participating in the ongoing process of determining land uses for the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, scheduled for closure.

* The Orange County Transportation Authority Board of Directors and management staff lack ethnic diversity.

* The Orange County Grand Jury acted unfairly in issuing a report earlier this year blaming illegal immigration for a host of social ills.

“We need to fix the system,” said Zeke Hernandez, a representative of the Santa Ana chapter of LULAC. “The big question is: How do we go about fixing what is wrong? How do we pinpoint what is wrong with the system?”

County Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder said she thinks Orange County is a place where members of all ethnic groups can participate in the political process if they take the initiative.

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“Every citizen and every resident of Orange County should have an opportunity to participate by coming forward,” Wieder said. “I just would not like to see Orange County portrayed as being irresponsive to our diverse culture. The diversity has enriched the county.”

LULAC officials said they plan to pare down their list of complaints before the public hearing. It is unclear where the hearing will be held, and several experts could be called upon to testify before the panel about the allegations LULAC filed, Hernandez said.

The 18-member California advisory panel, composed of volunteers from around the state, will use the hearing to further investigate the allegations, said Tom Pilla, a civil rights analyst in Los Angeles for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The advisory panel will probably then prepare a report on the session and forward its findings, and possibly recommendations, to the federal Civil Rights Commission in Washington, Pilla said.

The commission is not an enforcement body. It can, however, forward information about federal civil rights violations to agencies such as the U.S. Justice Department, an action that could result in loss of federal funding or lawsuits, officials said.

“The issues we’ve raised are the result of a pattern of institutionalized failings . . . and we must look at some of its failings and shortcomings,” Hernandez said. “And if there are things that are significantly wrong, we should able to replace it with something that is positive.”